>Nobody's forced to read SO questions. Yes, you're absolutely correct. However, you're not realizing that the truth you stated (free-will volunteer vs conscri

>Nobody's forced to read SO questions. Yes, you're absolutely correct. However, you're not realizing that the truth you stated (free-will volunteer vs conscript/slave) is actually the reason why users are not getting mandatory comments from downvoters. Because StackOverflow can't force desirable expert answerers like Jon Skeet to look at SO questions, they have to keep some social mechanisms in place to keep the site attractive and tolerable for him and his peers. (E.g. Jon Skeet doesn't want to leave mandatory comments for every downvote and many of his expert peers agree with him. So far, StackOverflow & Jeff Atwood also agrees with them: make downvotes easier not harder.) >Optimizing the site to maximize the probability that users feel stupid is not IMO the best choice. It's certainly possible to believe SO's philosophy is fundamentally flawed and the rules need to be changed to favor the question asker over the answerers and if Jon Skeet doesn't like it he can fuck off. Well, I don't think SO has determined that the "brain drain" is worth it. Look at the Skeet's profile[1]. He's probably the top C# and Java expert on that site. One of his most-upvoted answers is to the question, "Why is subtracting these two times (in 1927) giving a strange result?" The very tiny number of C# programmers with the expert skills to answer that question are outnumbered by the masses of people that ask stupid questions. It doesn't seem like your suggested changes take into account the asymmetry of the bad overwhelming the good. The resource constraints of Q&A site are the minority of experts capable of answering the questions with quality answers. SO noticed that resource constraint in 2010 and that's why it prioritizes highly valuable contributors like Jon Skeet over random people who can ask any bad question. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet